It’s mind-boggling to see the speed at which people, process, data, and things are becoming more and more connected. The Internet of Everything (IoE) world is already happening. But what does that world really look and feel like in our daily lives? How are our everyday experiences changing as a result? How is it helping us attain our goals and desired outcomes?

To answer these questions, we need to take a step back to understand a few critical elements. First, IoE is coming at us like a freight train, but it may not be evident because it’s happening in silos and with very specific technologies and applications. To appreciate how much activity is going on in this space, it’s critical to begin looking at the IoE landscape in specific segments. Here are two things that can help:

A video of an interview I conducted with Rick Smolan, author of “The Human Face of Big Data,” in which Rick provides some great insights and examples of life in a connected world.

This mind-bending chart that details different horizontals, verticals, and building blocks to help you explore and examine the evolution of IoE.

You wake up feeling rested thanks to systems that “know” the best temperatures and lighting for your personal sleep patterns. While brushing your teeth, a smart (very smart) mirror tracks your vital signs and pronounces all systems go. It then suggests a high-protein breakfast, since the intensive financial analysis on that day’s calendar will demand concentration. But first to the gym, where biometric sensors embedded in the fabric of your workout clothes track minute-by-minute progress.

A far-off future vision from Hollywood? Not at all. These technologies are on the horizon and may be impacting our daily lives in years to come. And they dovetail into a massive societal and technological shift that Cisco calls the Internet of Everything (IoE).

Obesity is a major public health concern. It can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep problems, cancer, and other disorders. Not to mention the emotional and psychological effects it can have. It can also, if left unchecked, become a life-long issue with overweight kids often becoming overweight adults and childhood obesity leading to increased mortality rates during adulthood.

One of the major factors leading to obesity is a lack of physical activity. Researchers have found that:
• Obese children were 35% less active on school days and 65% less active on weekends compared to non-obese children
• 25% of those adults who were considered active at ages 14 to 19 were also active adults, compared to 2% of those adults who were inactive at ages 14 to 19
• Children were 21.5% more likely to be overweight when watching 4+ hours of TV per day and 4.5% more likely to be overweight when using a computer one or more hours per day
• Currently at least 60% of the world’s population gets insufficient exercise

Disturbing facts for sure so the question is how can we motivate people to be more active? Gamification may just be a critical component in motivating and encouraging people to engage in physical activity. I touched on the Wii Fit Plus and Your Shape Fitness Evolved for Kinect in a previous blog post. However I have recently been introduced to some interesting examples that warrant further examination.

The Lappset Mobile Playground is one of my favorites because it not only drives physical activity it also encourages people to get outdoors and learn while playing. Lappset introduces games that leverage QR codes posted through-out a playground setting, for example Math&Mem. The math portion of the game consists of three different levels; easy, normal and hard. Easy or normal levels drive users to find the target sum by adding together numbers which can be found from the mobile tags attached to playground equipment. Hard level is a multiplication task where player will get the target number and then user must find two correct numbers from the play area and multiplying the sum of the two together constitute the target amount. See it in action in the below video.

Another great example of gaming physicality is Zamzee by HopeLab. Read More »

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